Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 1 MARCH 2023

16 Paintings by Edward McGuire are rare enough. A relatively late starter, he was a painstakingly slow worker, and was only in his mid-50s when he died. So it is to say the least unusual that such a substantial group of works - eight in all - should appear in a single auction, and all the more remarkable that they all come from one collection, that of Patrick MacEntee. In fact the renowned defence barrister was for a significant period one of a small number of committed supporters of the artist. In his biographical study of McGuire, Brian Fallon noted that MacEntee purchased several portraits, including one of Fallon himself, “not all of which he can have coveted…” But then, he might. Because McGuire was, as Fallon judged, “the finest Irish portrait painter of his generation, and was possibly the finest Irish portraitist since John Butler Yeats”, an assessment that still holds. Each of his paintings, whatever its genre, is a finely wrought piece of work to be relished in its own right. Since his early death, his work has steadily grown in stature, and now, remote from the stylistic squabbles and debates of his day, it stands as exceptional not alone in an Irish but in any context. McGuire was one of those rare artists who conjure up a com- plete vision of the world, a kind of alternative reality, in every picture. Alternative? His painting is, in conventional terms, re- alist in that it is representational and everything he depicts is readily recognisable, be that a person, a bird, a table, a leaf or an interior. All are rendered with compelling, undeniable clari- ty. We know what we are looking at. He was not a photorealist, though. Rather he represents his subjects with something akin to scientific precision, a forensic scrutiny that ignores photo- graphic or atmospheric optical effects. It is hardly surprising that his favoured subjects in- cluded several taxidermic birds he acquired early on, various animal carcasses he chanced upon, and that he remarked more than once to Brian Fallon that ideally he would like to keep his portrait subjects in a fridge and take them out as needed. The world he depicts has an ideal and idealised clarity, removed from everyday life. The same could be said of much of the work of the contemporary German artist Thomas Demand, for exam- ple, and several other artists, including Lucian Freud. Born in 1932, Edward was the third of four children of Bridget (nee Neary) and Edward McGuire. Edward senior was a well known public figure: a successful businessman, sports- man and senator who became the owner of Brown Thomas, he was also a capable painter and an art collector. His son was born with a heart murmur and suffered poor health as a child. Rather against the odds, he grew up to be a natural athlete. He showed no particular inclination towards artistic pursuits before his father took him on a visit to Florence. There he was bowled over by the painters of the Florentine Renaissance, so much so that, when his half-hearted attempts to enter the fam- ily business came to nothing, he convinced his father that he should go study art in Italy. While he took readily to aspects of bohemian life, he was slow to find his own approach as a painter. That approach, decisively influenced by Patrick Swift and the earlier Lucian Freud, stood in notable contrast to his father’s inclination towards Jack B Yeats and Post-Impressionism (at first he even exhibited un- der a pseudonym, Edward Augustine). And his working meth- od was exhaustive and time-consuming, with no possibility of short-cuts, limiting his capacity to generate a liveable income. His black-painted, carefully organised studio almost had the air of science lab. Austerity didn’t rule entirely: he listened to mu- sic as he worked, mostly jazz. He made light of his natural talent and emphasised the labour of craft,: “Unless you come to terms with craftsmanship you can’t express your emotion,” he wrote. His colour dictionary (now in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, gifted by his widow, Sara, general known as Sally McGuire - nee Wright) took years of effort. It was not a whimsical pursuit. As James White observed, the principle underlying it was integral to the singular appearance of his paintings. Rather than resort- ing to shades of “photographic” greys, he created complex ton- al structures in terms of precisely defined colour mixtures. This largely accounts for the extraordinary, hyper-real quality of his images and the vibrancy of their surfaces, even in the darkest hues. His portrait of Garech Browne, exhibited at the RHA Annual Exhibition in 1970, marked his arrival as a mature art- ist and generated enormous praise and interest. Throughout the next decade and a half, his most productive years, portrai- ture was central to his output, whether commissioned or on his own initiative (still life being the other major strand, as in his startling, monochromatic Dead Cat). Browne, who established Claddagh Records and was an important cultural presence for many decades, was a not untypical subject, being male and involved in the arts. It is particularly noticeable, though, that McGuire knew many poets and writers and really liked paint- ing them. His tally is considerable, including his superb Michael Harnett, now in the Limerick City Gallery collection, and his endlessly reproduced 1974 study of Seamus Heaney (in the Ul- ster Museum). Iconic is an overused term, but he certainly had the knack of producing iconic views of his portrait subjects. Among MacEntee’s paintings there are first-rate portraits of poets and writers Paul Durcan, Sydney Bernard Smith, John Jordan and Brian Fallon. One of the finest 20th century Irish painters, Patrick Collins, settled back in Ireland after some restless years in France, is given fine, dignified treatment in a work that captures his debonair flair. A half-length view of Seán MacBride is coun- terpointed by a smaller, tighter view of the politician’s head. Here as elsewhere, McGuire does not inject expression or at- titude. Rather he’s content to let the complexities of character and personality emerge in his rigorous accounts of people as they present themselves and, in his breath-taking paintings, all that, and much more, is brilliantly evident. Aidan Dunne, January 2023 An Important Collection of Works by Edward McGuire RHA (1932-1986) (Lots 5 - 13 inclusive)